"This marks the first time that it is possible to miss beneficial upgrades in a Mario series title."
I'm not quite sure what you mean there. The mushrooms only upgrade your life meter until the end of the current stage. The coins let you get extra lives in the mini-game, but that's not unusual. Neither represents a significant diversion from what came before. In the first game, you could miss all sorts of power-ups if you didn't hit the right blocks. You also couldn't scroll the screen back to the left, so exploration was more linear and items were even more likely to get missed.
I'm not quite sure what you mean there. The mushrooms only upgrade your life meter until the end of the current stage. The coins let you get extra lives in the mini-game, but that's not unusual. Neither represents a significant diversion from what came before. In the first game, you could miss all sorts of power-ups if you didn't hit the right blocks. You also couldn't scroll the screen back to the left, so exploration was more linear and items were even more likely to get missed.
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality
"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world
"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world
